On July 23, the Trade Remedy and Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce announced that it would launch an expiry review investigation related to anti-dumping measures on imports of grain oriented flat-rolled electrical steel (GOES) from Japan, South Korea and the European Union. The investigated products fall under Chinese tariff code categories 72251100 and 72261100. The investigation is scheduled to run from July 23, 2021 to July 23, 2022.

GOES is primarily used in transformers. Chinese AD/CVD measures on GOES imported from the United States were previously the subject of a WTO dispute.

GOES imported from Japan, South Korea and the EU had been subject to anti-dumping measures since July of 2016, at the following rates: 39 percent to 45.7 percent (Japanese companies); 37.3 percent (South Korean companies) and 46.3 percent (EU companies). Korean company POSCO reached a settlement with MOFCOM and has not been subject to anti-dumping measures since June of 2018.

The anti-dumping measures were set to expire on July 22, 2021, but on May 20, MOFCOM received a petition for an expiry review. The Petitioners were Baoshan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. and Shougang Zhixin Qian'an Co., Ltd., which account for 60-80 percent of domestic production.  

The Petitioners calculated the export prices, normal prices, and dumping margins as follows:

The Petitioners claimed that even with the anti-dumping measures, the weighted average import prices of GOES from these three parties dropped 6 percent between 2016 and 2020. In the meantime, the Petitioners argued, the domestic industry had been economically unstable and vulnerable. In particular, sales, market share, revenue and employment of the domestic GOES industry experienced overall declines during the period, according to the petition.

The Petitioners noted that the anti-dumping measures have helped keep out the dumped goods to some extent. For instance, GOES imports from these three parties had shrunk 84.5 percent, with some fluctuations during the period (from 39,480 tonnes to 6,137 tonnes), and these three parties’ combined market share of all imports in China had dropped from 92.23 percent in 2016 to 7 percent in 2020.

Terminating the anti-dumping measures would bring more dumped GOES into China, according to the Petitioners. All countries (except for China) have been experiencing declining demand for GOES and all three investigated parties are heavily reliant on exports for their GOES industries. In the meantime, China has a growing demand, with 33 percent growth from 2016 to 2020, and the sale price of GOES in China is more attractive than in other regions. Therefore, the Petitioners claimed that once the anti-dumping measures are terminated, GOES from Japan, South Korea and the EU may be dumped into the Chinese market again and cause continued injury to the domestic industry.

This investigation does not cover GOES from the UK. Previously MOFCOM announced that any new trade remedy or expiry review investigations against the EU after December 31, 2020 would no longer apply to the United Kingdom. Since the Petitioners did not include the UK in their request, GOES antidumping measures against UK companies terminated on July 23, 2021.